


Necessary Evil

by sebviathan



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hans is a sociopath, Hans-centric fic, yes i am a hans-sympathizer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 12:16:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebviathan/pseuds/sebviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Hans ever wanted was to feel something, to be more than just a toy. It's not fair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Necessary Evil

He wasn't always like this. Hardly anyone like him can say that they felt the same way they do now when they were eight or younger. Then again, maybe a lot of them just don't remember.

But Hans does. He remembers being six years old and loving his mother, and he remembers hugging her every day and even, once, telling her that he didn't want her to die before he did. As far as he can tell, that wasn't fake. Those feelings weren't pretend, back then. His heart used to be full to the brim, and he can only guess that somewhere along the line, it just emptied itself.

At age eight, his oldest brother, Jakob, was twenty-five and lived in the room farthest from his in their castle on the Southern Isles. Next were the twins, Anders and Christoff, who were both twenty-three. And his mother had kept having children, one per year, in an attempt to eventually birth a girl. She ended up with thirteen boys before she finally gave up _—_ or, really, grew too weak to have anymore children without a larger risk of them turning out unhealthy.

The thirteenth was Hans, and he was nothing more than a new toy for his brothers, it seemed. Perhaps not the ones who were already adults and sorting their own matters and even getting married and having children of their own _—_ but the younger ones who were still teenagers, yes. He was the one who  _should have been a girl_ , who upset their mother the most because he was the one whose birth weakened her. He was the smallest. And the youngest.

Gods, if only his mother had had just  _one_  more boy after him. Hans would have been one off from being neglected so very badly. Though of course if she'd had a girl afterwards, he'd still have been ignored. She would have been the favorite.

Neglect was a horrible thing. And how cruel it was to have so many children, all boys, in such a time: The oldest got the throne. That was it. There was no hope of ever having the throne until he was so old that he wouldn't want it anymore, and there was so much desire for the throne in him as a child that it nearly killed him.

Hans was never an option to succeed the throne, so his father's eyes barely passed over him. His mother grew too weak, over the years, to speak to him much either. He woke up often finding that one of his brothers had literally come in and urinated on his bedroom floor in the middle of the night, and there were just so many of them that none of them could be punished because his mother could never find out who did it. He found bugs in his food sometimes, too. And some nights, one of his brothers would dress up in a dark fur cloak and hide under his bed and grab his feet when he got up.

Hans is still terribly afraid of the dark because of that. He's never told anyone, but the concept of creatures bigger than him, more powerful, hidden where he can't see them... it terrifies him. Because too many times as a young boy _—_ _much_  too young _—_ he was utterly convinced for up to a minute at one time that he was going to die. Sharp noises in the middle of the night would keep him awake and panicking until he was finally too tired to fear for his life.

The first time Hans ever had a panic attack, he had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that he thought someone was possibly in his room and that he was breathing hard and couldn't stop. Believing something was wrong with his lungs, he eventually mustered up the bravery to waken his parents and tell them.

"You're  _eleven years old_ , Hans," his father told him in tired exasperation. "Not so long ago, you would have already been considered a man. You can't keep doing this."

They brushed it off as him being too sensitive about nightmares, though his mother did the simple kindness of letting him have water before he went back to bed.

It was also around the time that three of his older brothers began pretending that he was invisible. Just those three, luckily, but they carried it on to the point that Hans almost believed, sometimes, that they could actually not see him. They did that for years, until they were old enough to marry and vaguely apologized to him.

That wasn't enough. Hans was still angry _—_ come to think of it, he was always angry. Now, he can't remember ever not being angry, even back when he felt things like most people do. But he pretended to accept it, he lied and put on a smile and hugged his brothers _—_

And then went out and found a homeless beggar and killed him and burned his corpse outside the castle.

That's the earliest time Hans can remember feeling that way. Nothing, that is. Feeling nothing. Except anger.

He couldn't even bring himself to care about all that neglect anymore. He was no longer a broken child who needed love _—_ did he even  _want_  love? Later on he doesn't guess so because every woman he tries to court for obligation's sake, he ends up hating and dumping off. Sometimes killing.

But no, he was not broken any longer. He still doesn't know if he could say that he was somehow fixed at the time, though... It was like he had started out a cup full of water, and then someone dropped it before anyone could drink it, and it remained broken for a long time. And then an unseeable force came along and fixed the cup all of a sudden, all the cracks hastily put back together. It looked fine inside and out but didn't function as properly as it was meant to. Nothing could put that water back in the cup, and even if you were to pour more in, it would only go filtering out.

Hans is an empty cup, and you can't fill it. He doesn't want you to.

He considered himself fixed for all intents and purposes. Panic attacks didn't find him anymore and he no longer looked at any of his brothers in fear, but merely with a desire to see them gone from the earth. If it weren't for the fact that without other people, there was no power to be had, he would wish that everyone would be gone.

Probably no one could explain why it had all just stopped, but Hans didn't even care for his mother anymore. She died from sickness when he was sixteen and he had to fake sadness because he simply couldn't find it in him any longer to  _care_. When evaluating his life, in fact, the only thing he could find a single drop of passion for was power.

Having been neglected his whole life, it was no surprise to him. He wanted to rule higher than his brothers for once. He wanted to have  _armies_ , not just simple guards, at his command _—_ he wanted a castle to himself with no one else in it. He wanted to build things and knock them down.

Hans is finally getting what he's wanted his whole life, and the lies were so easy to construct that he can't believe it. He's been putting on this act for so long that he fits right into it, so easy that it really becomes him. Who would ever guess that behind his beautiful hazel eyes there was... nothing?

Other people like him, maybe. And there are others like him, he is sure of it. He can't be the only man who is burdened with an emptiness like this and deafening silence in his head.

Anna is beautiful, though, he can't deny that. Enough to briefly spark his interest when he first meets her before he even knows exactly who she is. And then she mentions that she's the princess and it takes everything for Hans not to laugh in excitement for what a treasure he's stumbled upon, now entirely uninterested in her as any kind of fling. She's a tool, and a very useful one.

As he dances and flirts with her, though, he almost wishes that he could care, that he could  _actually_  love her. You can manipulate someone and still care about them _—_ that's possible, isn't it?

Maybe he could do that. Maybe he could pull some feeling out of the void inside of him, maybe he could take some of his desire for power and lust and turn it into desire for Anna, just  _maybe_  he could pretend to love her so much that he convinces himself that it's real. Maybe he could live like normal people and feel things (in moderation, of course) and be happy. Truly happy. Not just proud and satisfied.

 _Almost_. He almost wishes that. But he can't  _really_  want that, not for more than a few seconds, with a girl who is just so stupid and incompatible with him. Perhaps a girl who had the same goals and also felt nothing, from whom he wouldn't have to hide the fact that he kills innocent people just because he feels like it, who would even be willing to help him... perhaps even a man. Hans can't find it in him to object to that, not inwardly. If Anna could be that for him (aside from the man part), then perhaps this could be real.

But she isn't. So it can't.

Not to mention the void.

Gods, sometimes Hans truly does wish that people could see it. The void, that is. As socially inconvenient as it would be, sometimes he wants everyone to see exactly how empty he is. How much  _stronger_  he is than them. How he's angry to his core and how his soul is fire-hot and his heart is cold enough to give its own burn. If only for the shock factor.

And really, that's partially why he decides to tell Anna the truth when he does instead of kissing her first and getting her hopes up. He wants to see the look on her face when she realizes it was all an act (a very good one, he might add) _—_ he  _revels_  in it. He sees all the emotions of pure betrayal and pain and confusion behind her eyes, and it gets his heart up to a rate that he can't remember having felt in a while. The adrenaline rush is close to what he gets when he kills, and he actually  _feels_  something.

What some might label  _unnecessary evil_  is honestly just what needs to be done for Hans to feel human. Is he simply supposed to go about his days always feeling so empty? Is he supposed to live depressed and alone and unhappy and unfathomably angry? That would just be downright unfair, wouldn't it?

It's not his fault.

There was a time that Hans was a normal little boy full of love and emotion to give, but it's not his fault that that changed. It's someone else's fault and it always has been.

That is what occupies his mind on his trip back to the Southern Isles where he knows he will be punished, and he is so furious at the injustice that he cries until the blood vessels beneath his eyes break.

 _Why_  did he have to be cursed with emptiness?

He wishes he could fill it with something.


End file.
